Ashes
by Jewel Insert Witty Name Here
Summary: Years after the war has ended and Hermione has married Draco Malfoy, Ron reflects on how he lost the girl he loved. Angsty and ever so slightly dark.


**Ashes  
A Harry Potter Fanfiction  
By Jewel **

Disclaimer: Harry Potter and its characters were created by JK Rowling and are copyrighted to the rightful owners. There is no copyright infringement intended by this fanfiction.

Summary: Years after the war has ended and Hermione has married Draco Malfoy, Ron reflects on how he lost the girl he loved. Angsty and ever so slightly dark.

**Rated PG-13 for adult themes. General spoilers apply.**

See author's notes at the bottom.

Inspired by Francesca Lia Block's "Ice."

(Please forgive me in advance for the messed up spacing. It's all FanfictionNet's fault.)

_Ashes (1/1)_

She use to be mine... Before this entire mess began, before the official war started, she was mine. Not mine in any overt way of course, but mine nonetheless. Everyone who knew us sensed it and respected it. I knew, I simply knew, that when it was all over I would marry her and we'd live happily ever after.

It was not suppose to end the way it did. He wasn't suppose to have her, and she wasn't suppose to fall in love with him. It's like the bad guy getting the damsel and the hero being left in the tower for insects and crows to devour. It was entirely wrong and against all laws of nature that people should approve of their relationship. It's revolting that our bestfriend feels at ease with the situation.

In some ways I feel more betrayed because he doesn't object to it. If I were to lose to her to anyone else, it should've been to him. I could've walked away angry but whole if she'd turned from me to him!

* * *

The thing is, it all started out as an assignment. Hermione was suppose to use him, get information out of him. I always thought he was just a walking wanker who did whatever his Daddy told him. We all thought he was a brainless drone who would wordlessly accept the Dark Mark and join Voldemort's flock. 

Before everything began the three of us would joke about him being a puppet. I should've suspected that she felt something for the prat, but I knew she was an emotional person. Just look at her dumb SPEW project! I assumed that she just generally felt sorry for idiots who were raised to be even bigger morons. How was I to know she truly felt sad that his father raised Draco to follow in his evil footsteps? How was I to know that she thought he could be anything but a git if he was given different options?

When the matter came up I was vehemently against it. It was too dangerous! She could be killed, or worse. She herself had strong doubts. How was she, a bushy-haired, know-it-all, suppose to seduce the bastard? How was she suppose to make him believe she wasn't in the Order? For all those six years she'd spat insults like the rest of us. Of course he would see beneath it! It would never, in a reasonable world, work.

Who the hell would've guessed he was more ambitious than his father? Who the hell could have guess that he was smarter than Lucius? Who would've thought that Draco Malfoy, resident ferret, had the brains to realize that proud purebloods were being herded by a dark wizard born of a witch and a muggle? Who would've thought he had the intelligence to see the irony?

She hadn't been on the assignment for more than two days before things went up in flames. He knew something wasn't right. Even he couldn't be thick enough to believe someone like Hermione would be interested in him in that way. Two days into the assignment and he made a deal with the Order. No one would honestly believe that Hermione had him love struck, but they would believe she was under the Imperius Curse. People, the Death Eaters in particular, would believe that he'd been able to put her under the curse and was using her to get vital information from the Order. Now, the Order was more than happy to go along with this. It meant their only double agent wasn't an embittered potions master.

* * *

So it was at the beginning of the Seventh Year that it all started. He stormed through our lives like a tornado and she wasn't the same after. It was as if he swept her up in his turbulence and then refused to set her back down...

At first I believed she was merely following instructions. That she was only pretending to be his lover. Some in the Order believed he needed someone to care for him and then he'd truly be good. The toad would become the prince.

See, Draco didn't want to follow a mudblood wizard. He wanted the purebloods to follow him. His philosophy, she told us once, was that the enemy of his enemy was his friend. He would use to Order to get rid of Voldemort then rally the purebloods around him. Everyone said it was only talk. That he wouldn't really try to become the next Dark Lord. They said he might have the ambition, but not the power. I remember that she had kept quiet during the discussion.

By then, almost finished with the first term of the school year, I thought he really had her under the Imperius Curse. She rarely spoke to us outside of classes. She spent a lot of her free time with him. I knew it was only suppose to be part of the assignment, that she would withdraw from her friends in public. But even in private she seemed distracted.

Harry once suggested that while Draco might only have the ambition to rule the Wizarding world, Hermione had the power.

It's common knowledge that she's the cleverest witch our age. She's much more adept at witchcraft than many adults, and certainly all us students. I'll admit that sometimes I've been intimidated by her power. It's not just her abilities or her intelligence, but how she uses them. Like what she did to Rita Skeeter in our Fourth Year.

If Malfoy was ever able to twist her, to put her under the Imperius Curse, then he would very well be able to rise to Voldemort's level...

We asked her once if maybe she was taking the assignment too seriously. If maybe she wasn't falling into the role and forgetting the truth. I remember, as clear as if it were yesterday, that she just stared at us and then left without replying.

* * *

I never want to know what drove her to become his lover in truth. I remember that the night before students left to go home for the Holidays, she didn't come back to the Gryffindor Tower. I know she didn't return until late that morning because I waited for her in the common room. She never even looked at me as she walked across the common room to the girl's dormitory that morning.

* * *

I do know the moment I realized that I'd lost her, and that she wasn't mine anymore. One night I was in the library searching for her when I overheard them. I remember every word and every movement...

She had been reading a large book on poisonous plants, and he was toying with a quill, staring at her. Suddenly he asked her, "Do you believe in love?"

Not looking up from the book she replied, "I suppose."

"Do you think you could ever love me?"

"Are you saying you're in love with me?" She countered, finally looking up.

He shrugged. "I honestly don't know. I feel something for you. It's not the hatred I felt those first few years. I guess I'd have to know what love feels like first..."

She picked up her quill and started to copy something out of the book. After a little while she said, "Snape said you'd probably fall in love with me. He said it's because you've been treated as nothing more than a puppet or piece of clay."

"So you think I've fallen madly in love with you because you treat me like I'm not a prat?"

"Nah," she said softly, "It's because of my irresistible charm and breathtaking beauty."

He laughed then and I wanted to hit him. "You are beautiful," he told her, all humor gone. "You're so beautiful it's unbelievable."

"And you're a sweet-talking ferret." She smiled, taking the sting out of the barb and I knew she wasn't the same girl I knew. She'd actually come to care about the bastard!

"But I shag like a god," he retorted, smiling back at her. And for a few seconds they just looked at each other... just smiled and I knew neither had to say it. They were in love. Or some strange version of it.

* * *

He did warp her. Changed her. Made her like him. In the final battle we were in Hogwarts, and people were dropping like flies the way the Killing Curse was being thrown about. It was then that we truly lost her. When she and Draco killed his father...

Lucius had Hermione cornered, and she couldn't get to her wand. Lucius had raised his own wand and was about to cast some curse on her when Draco stabbed him. The younger Malfoy had somehow gotten the Gryffindor sword that Harry had dropped. I remember staring in horror, too frozen in fear to do anything to protect her. And he just ran his own father through with a sword... Hermione retrieved her wand and calmly, coldly, cast the Killing Curse. And then they hugged. Over his father's corpse, he pulled her to him and whispered, "I love you."

I remember turning and stumbling away, knocking Neville out of my way in my haste to get away. To not hear her response. I was too afraid that it might kill me.

* * *

Whatever there is that's between them, I'm still not convinced it's love. I know I love her. I love her with all my being. I'm not sure that I'll ever be able to get over her. She seems to have gotten over me just fine.

After the war, after Voldemort's death, they started acting like a 'real' couple. Holding hands, giggling, kisses in the corridors between classes when they think so no one's looking. But I see it. I'm always looking. Call me the masochist. I loathe to see the sight of them together and happy when I'm miserable. But I can't ever seem to look away.

After graduation they actually got engaged. Can you believe it? She wants to marry the git! The bastard who called her "mudblood" more times than I can count. The prat who plotted against us and the Order for years before growing a brain!

She chose him over me... I had always been there for her. I had always loved her. I had always, or at least mostly, stood up for her. And still, even after the war and after the "assignment," she chose to go with him. To marry him. To give him my happily ever after.

* * *

No one has ever told me, even though I've begged and begged for an answer, what exactly Hermione had to do when she was playing an undercover agent for the Order. I've pleaded with her to tell me, but she only ever says that I wouldn't understand.

I don't believe her. I lover her, and I was part of the Order. I was there in every major battle. I fought right alongside her and Harry and Malfoy. I was there. I can understand, if only she'd tell me.

Harry once told me that I wouldn't ever understand. Apparently he does. As far as I know, no one has ever told him the exact details about Hermione's assignment. But still he understands. Yes, I'm consumed by jealously sometimes. And yes, sometimes I hate him.

Sometimes I hate her, too. Sometimes, sitting in my room, thinking about the past like I am tonight, I feel like she's lit a fire on me, one that'll never go out. So sometimes I have no choice but to hate her, because I know I'll never stop loving her, and it makes me a burning pillar of an idiot.

* * *

"...I'm in love with you. I didn't mean to fall in love, but it just happened. I can't imagine life without you," I confessed the summer before Seventh Year began.

And she replied, "I don't love you. I can't love you."

"Why not?" I asked incredulously.

"Because you'll never understand. You'll never understand who I am."

"But I know exactly who you are. You're Hermione, and I love you. I can't understand why you're being this way. You know I've loved you for a long time. And I know you, too, have felt that way for a while."

"Sometimes love blinds, Ron. It warps your perception and nothing looks how it really is. I'm not jaded enough to believe that love doesn't exist, but I'm not naive enough to believe that selfless love exists. And you won't understand who I am until you can see me without love blinding you. So, you see, sometimes love isn't always enough," she answered before walking away.

* * *

Once, a few lifetimes ago, on the night of her engagement party, I asked her how she could love Draco. Her response was, that once you strip away everything and looked at them carefully enough, you'd see how alike they were. She said that he understood her because he understood himself. He didn't let the love blind him to who she was. And she didn't let her love blind her to who he was.

"I guess that's necessary if she's going to keep him from being the next Dark Lord," Harry told me when I asked him about it.

My reply had been, simply, "Who's going to stop her from becoming to next Voldemort?"

Harry stared at me as though I were crazy. "Do you honestly believe she can be evil?"

"Like she's said, I don't know her..."

_END _

**Author's Notes:**

1) This was inspired by Francesca Lia Block's fairy tale "Ice," though there's no real resemblance between the short story and my fanfic. I just happened to be reading the story when it hit me how I should phrase this story idea that's been haunting me for a while.

2) I apologize if the fanfic is too fragmented and sketchy. I had several ideas and I really didn't like how it came out. I had to write and re-write some lines several times, and even then I wasn't always happy. I can be very picky about my writing, but my mind is a weird thing, so sometimes it's difficult to convey my idea in a way that'll make sense to everyone.

Originally the narration was suppose to be anonymous, but at times things got confused, so for the sake of simplicity I had to go back and write names into scenes.

3) Here's an interesting thing about the title: I had a beautiful title figured out in my head before I even had the concept for this fic. The title was to be "Going Up In Flames." Then I got a better idea. This fanfic is really a prequel or sequel, depending on how you look at it, to an up-coming fic. Now, the as-of-yet-unwritten fanfic will actually show the Hermione/Draco relationship, the premise of which is set in this. And I think the title "Going Up In Flames" would be more suited to that fic. Hence this fanfic got stuck with the title "Ashes."

As always, feedback is greatly appreciated!

EDIT: Actually, this is more or less a sequel/prequel to "Wake The Darkness." Though I prefer this to stand as it's own 'fic. And I thought it'd be nice to leave in the original author's notes as I'm posting this more than a year after it was written.

**Jewel  
01.10.2004**


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